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Two Years of Emacs Solo

rahuljuliato.com

41–50 of 147 posts

Re: Two Years of Emacs Solo

#41
post #36
post #31

> — Sensible file handling: backups and auto-saves in a cache/ directory, recentf for recent files, clean buffer naming with uniquify It's crazy to me how out of the box when you edit nginx file at /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/foo it creates another file foo~ there and nginx tries to load that too When I tried to ask emacs reddit community they started attacking me for changing the default that only I need and fits every…

Been using gnu emacs since the 80s and it’s one of the first things I changed. Did you figure it out? If not I can dig up the answer tomorrow.

Yes I’ve added this to hundreds of containers and vms at this point

(setq make-backup-files nil)

Re: Two Years of Emacs Solo

#42

If I was going to reimplement Emacs it wouldn't be with Lisp. Is there some reason Lisp is superior to any other general-purpose programming language for text editing? I'm skeptical because to my knowledge, Emacs is the only major text editor written in Lisp.

A good reason is that Lisp has almost no syntax. So it can act as a neutral language that is easy to learn for developers from other languages.

Re: Two Years of Emacs Solo

#43
post #31

> — Sensible file handling: backups and auto-saves in a cache/ directory, recentf for recent files, clean buffer naming with uniquify It's crazy to me how out of the box when you edit nginx file at /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/foo it creates another file foo~ there and nginx tries to load that too When I tried to ask emacs reddit community they started attacking me for changing the default that only I need and fits every…

I always disable those auto-backup-files features in any editor I use. Never understood why that was the default-on for so many editors.

I do too, it’s just that I’ve realised that emacs-nox is awesome container / vm editor out of the box, this backup thing is the only most annoying part (and Ubuntu 22.04 emacs packages expired cert)

Re: Two Years of Emacs Solo

#44
post #31

> — Sensible file handling: backups and auto-saves in a cache/ directory, recentf for recent files, clean buffer naming with uniquify It's crazy to me how out of the box when you edit nginx file at /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/foo it creates another file foo~ there and nginx tries to load that too When I tried to ask emacs reddit community they started attacking me for changing the default that only I need and fits every…

(setq backup-directory-alist '(("." . "~/.emacs.d/backups/")))

First thing I do any time I install emacs.

Note that tramp will kvetch if you do this, but it still works fine.

Re: Two Years of Emacs Solo

#45
post #31

> — Sensible file handling: backups and auto-saves in a cache/ directory, recentf for recent files, clean buffer naming with uniquify It's crazy to me how out of the box when you edit nginx file at /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/foo it creates another file foo~ there and nginx tries to load that too When I tried to ask emacs reddit community they started attacking me for changing the default that only I need and fits every…

I always disable those auto-backup-files features in any editor I use. Never understood why that was the default-on for so many editors.

It made more sense when running editors over tenuous telnet connections was more common

Re: Two Years of Emacs Solo

#46

Poor guy - stuck with lisp on an ancient operating system ... And no - vim isn't any better either. I always felt that in the emacs-versus-vim debate there were two losing sides.

Perhaps these poor guys possess a secret wealth beyond your wildest imagination. I wouldn't give up Emacs for anything.

Re: Two Years of Emacs Solo

#47
post #41
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Been using gnu emacs since the 80s and it’s one of the first things I changed. Did you figure it out? If not I can dig up the answer tomorrow.

Yes I’ve added this to hundreds of containers and vms at this point (setq make-backup-files nil)

Just use tramp mode instead.

The fact it can do multi-hop edits is far too much power for us mere mortals.

Re: Two Years of Emacs Solo

#48

If I was going to reimplement Emacs it wouldn't be with Lisp. Is there some reason Lisp is superior to any other general-purpose programming language for text editing? I'm skeptical because to my knowledge, Emacs is the only major text editor written in Lisp.

Because it's very easy to generate lisp code. It's meant for metaprogramming

Re: Two Years of Emacs Solo

#49

If I was going to reimplement Emacs it wouldn't be with Lisp. Is there some reason Lisp is superior to any other general-purpose programming language for text editing? I'm skeptical because to my knowledge, Emacs is the only major text editor written in Lisp.

>Is there some reason Lisp is superior to any other general-purpose programming language for text editing?

purely for text editing? No. But that's not what distinguishes Emacs, it's famously very mediocre at it. The point of Emacs is to be a fully transparent, inspectable, dynamic and changeable environment. In spirit similar to Smalltalk systems like Pharo. And for that a Lisp is not the only choice but a very good one.

There's very few languages and environments that facilitate jumping into any place, making a change, compiling or evaluating a block of code or treating it as data and continuing seamlessly.

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